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Morality Prior To Conscience

Chapter 5

The Relationship Between Deliberate And Indeliberate Morality

72. But is it possible to posit a human, moral act which, although in opposition to the rule of truth, is nevertheless without fault? We cannot answer this question without discussing habitual morality in human beings.

Habit is also a principle of action, and we are sometimes directed in what we do as a result of movements communicated to us through habit. If, therefore, a morally disordered habit can be found, but without fault in the strict sense, the movements and actions dependent upon this habit as necessary effects would have to be considered free of fault, in the strict sense of the word. We have already seen that it is possible for morality to be imputable as fault without any antecedent conscience. Here we wish to go further and investigate the possibility of positing disordered, but not strictly culpable morality.

73. Does an habitual morality exist prior to our moral acts? If so, can it be disordered without express fault? It is clear that such a question deals with the most intimate aspects of human nature, and cannot be faced adequately without profound consideration of the notions of fault, will and freedom. Difficult problems cannot be avoided, however, if our study is to be of some assistance to our readers, whose help and patience we seek as all of us turn to good use the gifts of intelligence we have received from God's goodness.

First, we must examine the concepts of morality, sin and fault.

 74. As we have seen, the concept of morality lies in the relationship between will and law.(41) Whenever the two extremes of law and will are related to one another so that the will is in a given state relative to the law, morality is present. Morality is the state of the will relative to the law. But the law, as manifested to us when we first act, is not something abstract. The beings we conceive mentally become laws for us, requiring our practical reflection, and our willed, effective acknowledgement. Provided we have some mental conception of an (intellective) being, and some movement or inclination of will towards practical acknowledgement of what we know, morality is present in us. The practical acknowledgement of which we are speaking can, however, be an assent to or dissent from truth. In the case of dissent, the will is in a morally defective state because it stands in opposition to the nature of the conceived being.

75. The will can find itself opposed to the law in two ways, necessarily(42) or freely. This is the basis of the distinction St. Thomas was obliged to make between the concepts of sin and fault. For St. Thomas, the concept of sin consists in an act of will that departs from the rectitude of the law, although it may not be acting freely, while the concept of fault lies in a will which does evil, but by free choice. This is an admirable distinction. It means that the will, if it departs necessarily from the law, posits an immoral act and hence a sin because in such conditions will and law are in opposition. Nevertheless this act could not be imputed to fault in the person who did it because his will, although weak and defective, was not free. St. Thomas says: 'As the notion of evil is more comprehensive than that of sin, so the notion of sin is more comprehensive than that of fault. An act is said to be blameworthy or praiseworthy when it is imputed to the person who does it. But to praise or to blame simply means to impute the goodness or malice of an action to the person who does it. The act is imputed to the agent when he is able to control it; this happens in every willed(43) act because human beings control their actions by means of the will . . . therefore only willed (free) acts of good and evil are subject to praise or blame; and in them evil, sin and fault are the same.'(44)

Elsewhere St. Thomas teaches that if the act of will has not been preceded by deliberating reason, a sin cannot be imputed to mortal fault, although the will is engaged. 'Mortal sin' (that is, what is imputed as mortal sin) 'consists in aversion from the final end, which is God. This aversion appertains to deliberating reason whose function is to direct things to their end. Only when the deliberating reason has been unable to intervene, can the inclination of the soul towards something contrary to the final end not be mortal sin. This is the case in sudden movements.'(45)

76. According to Catholic teaching, there can be and there is in human beings a defective state of will containing the notion of sin, but not of fault. Given the notion of fault, which consists in a defective act of free will relative to the law, we may ask whether our will may turn from the law through necessity, without being free to do the contrary. In other words, can sin exist in a person without its being the fault of that person?

This is a difficult question for natural reasoning alone, but it can be reduced to another: can the will, the human operative principle, be so influenced by the action of some other force as to be necessarily inclined or determined to one or other part? We must note that we are not asking if the will can be violated, but if it can be determined necessarily. Will and violence are contradictory and mutually exclude one another; it is certain that the will always moves spontaneously. But does spontaneous movement exclude necessity? Can one conceive of an agent acting upon the will in such a way as to produce spontaneous movement in the will without the involvement of freedom?(46)

77. Natural reason finds no contradiction in the notion of such an agent. Careful observation shows, moreover, that the will is sometimes passive in its own way, and even necessitated. But to surprise our will in this state, and affirm the existence of such a state without danger of error, requires profound and extremely attentive observation that exceeds normal powers. Revelation, however, removes the doubt decisively by indicating the actual existence of such a state, above all in the great fact of original sin.

78. According to revealed doctrine, the sin in which we are all born is a true sin and a true fault. But if we consider it in the person sharing in it at the moment of his conception, without reference to the free will of its first author, it loses the notion of fault and simply retains that of sin.

Aquinas teaches: 'What depends upon one's origin cannot be imputed to fault if we consider only the new-born individual in himself; but if we consider him relative to the principle from which he originated (that is, his first parent), then it can be imputable to fault.'(47)

Again: 'The many human beings born of Adam are like the multiple parts of a single body. Now the action of one part of the body, of the hand for instance, is willed not by the hand, but by the soul, which first moves the different parts. A murder carried out by the hand is not imputed to the hand considered in itself and separate from the body; it is imputed to it as the part which is moved by the first principle in the person. In the same way the disorder in human beings generated from Adam is voluntary (free) in respect of the will of our first parent who, with his act of generation, moves all those originating and deriving from him, just as the soul's will moves all the corporeal parts to action. Hence the sin transmitted from our first parent is called original sin in his descendants, in contradistinction to the sin passed from the soul into the parts of the body, which is called actual sin. And as actual sin committed by a part of the body is only sin in that part in so far as the part belongs to the person himself (and can thus be called human sin), so original sin is not (culpable) sin in this person except in so far as he receives his nature from our first parent. Original sin, therefore, is called a "sin of nature", as St. Paul says: "We were by nature children of wrath".'(48)

79. This teaching is wholly in agreement with what St. Thomas says about the demerit of the damned. He maintains: 'The damned are not excused from demerit because they are under necessity to sin, but only because they have reached the depth of evil.' He continues: 'Nevertheless, the necessity of sinning excuses them from fault in so far as sin is necessary because every sin (in order to be fault) must be voluntary (free). But they are not excused in so far as their state depends upon a previous act of will. To this extent, the demerit of the subsequent sin would seem to belong to the previous fault.'(49)

80. I conclude from the teaching of this passage that there is a reason which excuses the damned from sin and another which excuses them from fault. Because their will has already reached the depth of evil and they can go no further they do not incur new sins. And they do not demerit through new faults because they adhere necessarily to what is evil. This necessity causes what theologians call 'a willed but non-free act', that is to say, the necessity takes away free will.(50) Consequently, if the damned had not reached the lowest point of evil, but were inclined to continual new crimes through unhappy necessity, they would go on sinning. Their sins, however, would not be fault in themselves but only relative to their cause.

81. As we have said, two conditions are needed for an immoral act: 1. that it be contrary to the law; 2. that it originate from the will. But the will moves itself towards its object either through necessity or freely. Sometimes it is subject necessarily to evil because of some previous fault which leaves the will so badly and habitually inclined that under certain circumstances it falls into evil. St. Augustine says: 'An evil will gives rise to evil desire; surrender to desire causes habit; and unresisted habit produces necessity.'(51)

82. In this state, the will is unable to deliberate. Already inclined to evil, it has in fact deliberated some time before the present, actual deliberation. Now it falls into evil through some blind instinct. Its act, however, is not done unknowingly; it apprehends intellectually the being in whose regard it sins, although passion prevents it from shaking off the unjust esteem that it habitually renders this being. When an occasion arises, the will, without having time for consideration, precipitates an actual unjust judgment, as if consideration had already been given to the matter. The faculty has indeed been suspended, but its general inclination prompts it towards evil as soon as opportunity offers.

83. This habitual evil inclination of the will, in so far as it is a consequence of Adam's sin, is the innate concupiscence which completes the notion of original sin.(52) We should note that although all the powers of human nature were wounded by the first fault, the major wound was inflicted on the will, the seat of morality. This wound in the will has also been inherited by posterity along with wounds in the other faculties. And with the wound in the will, that is, the highest power of human nature, sin has been inherited.

84. Our hereditary sin, because it is a defect in the human being's supreme principle (the natural will) makes the whole person defective and subjects him to damnation. We could say that this damnation is also imputation, but not without impropriety of language. It is certainly not imputation in the strict sense in which we attribute deliberate actions to a person. Nor can it constitute a personal fault (the only fault worthy of the name), although again we may say in a broad sense that it is a natural fault.

85. Following revealed doctrine, we see that the Saviour's baptism removes the damnation of original sin, or fault of nature as it may be called, by introducing into human beings another active, supernatural principle, superior to the natural will. This superior principle now becomes the seat of morality in human beings and, because it is holy, the seat of the holiness and salvation that depends totally upon the supreme principle.

86. Nevertheless the natural will, inclined to evil (concupiscence), remains along with the infused principle of holiness. But it is no longer the seat of original sin, nor through original sin the cause of damnation in human beings, because it no longer constitutes the supreme active principle. Fron now on, because it is subordinate to the supreme principle and dependent upon it, it can be governed and corrected by the supreme principle.(53)

87. 'Original sin,' says St. Thomas, 'is removed relative to its crime (that is, relative to sin and consequent damnation) because the soul once more receives grace (the new principle) which enriches the mind. Nevertheless original sin remains in act, not relative to the mind but relative to the fomes, which is a disorder in the inferior parts of the soul, and of the body in so far as human beings generate although not in so far as they understand. Baptised persons transmit original sin to their offspring, therefore, because parents generate not in so far as they are renewed by baptism, but in so far as they still retain something from the first sin.'(54)

88. Hence what remains of original sin is still the source of many moral disorders even after baptism. These unavoidable disorders, however, cannot be imputed to fault, nor are they sins; they do not have their source in the human being's supreme principle, where alone sin is truly found, nor do they depend upon free will.

89. The fomes, mentioned by St. Thomas and the Council of Trent, which remains in us even after baptism, must not be understood of our vitiated animal instinct alone. In addition, we have to take into account the weakness and bad inclination of the will, which easily surrenders to the animal instinct. The fomes is not sin because it has no place in the new, superior will acquired by us in baptism. It does, however, affect the old, and now lower, will still present after baptism. Because of its origin in sin, and its inclination to sin, this fomes is a moral defect, and remains in us until death. In this sense, the Apostle rightly extends the word sin to mean a defect in the order of moral matters when he speaks of 'sin which dwells within me.'(55)

The word 'sin' could not in fact refer to animal instinct alone, without relationship to the will, because animal instinct exists in beasts who have no will.(56) Damaged, defective animal instinct, considered without reference to the will, could rightly be called disordered, but never sin or immorality, which always implies relationship with the intellective power of will. When St. John rightly spoke of 'the will of the flesh,'(57) he was not referring simply to carnal instinct, but to the will as ceding to this instinct; the will of man, also mentioned by the evangelist, has to be interpreted in the sense of a will that surrenders to illusions of human happiness and greatness by excluding and opposing justice. It would be rash to affirm that Paul and St. John departed from the proper use of language without evident reason and necessity. The Apostle, speaking of himself after receiving justification, writes of 'the sin which dwells within me.' He means that he bears within himself a will inclined to second the suggestions of his weak flesh which, however, are conquered by the new will placed in us by grace. The Apostle possesses this will, which is at war with his old will although it does not destroy it as long as we walk in what St. Paul calls our 'body of death'.

90. Our interpretation of St. Paul's words is confirmed by the context. 'So then it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me.'(58) He says that he acts, but that it is not he who acts; the sin within him acts. He means that his supreme will, which now constitutes within him the personal element born of grace, no longer wishes to do evil; the defect is to be found in his natural will which, no longer personal, is unable to restrain the movements of the flesh.

91. We may note here that there are two ways in which a sin that is not free, and hence not imputable, can be present in the human being. They depend upon negative or positive defect in the will.

Negative defect is found in the will's non-intervention, when it should intervene; positive defect, when the will intervenes by assenting to the bad instinct. In both cases the disorder is related to the defective will, and can be called sin in a more or less extended sense.

92. In the passages quoted, as I understand them, St. Paul is speaking of the negative defect of the will. His words could be paraphrased as follows: 'Many movements in my flesh would of their nature be subject to, and governed by, the power of my will if my nature were as it should be. But these movements arise in me of themselves and against my will because through rebellion they have been subtracted from the will's dominion which is now so weak, relative to the overwhelming power of these movements, that they originate in my flesh despite the will and without its permission.'

93. This negative defect of the will's power over the flesh means that sin can be said to dwell in us even after baptism, provided we understand 'sin' to indicate a simple moral defect. But the nature of this defect of will may be understood better if we remember that the will has two strictly connected functions. One of them is simply to will (acts of choice); the other to command and govern our lower faculties (acts of command). We may usefully call the first function superior will, and the second lower will. Our will is shown at its weakest in the second function, where its effective dominion over the lower powers is decisively poor. As the Apostle says: 'I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.'(59) In other words, although I choose with my superior will to rule and hold in order my lower powers, I do the contrary because my weak will is unable to command the subject-powers which act independently.

This impotence could result in damnation if the supreme principle or superior will of a person were to surrender and consent to the disorder. The superior will has, however, been healed (it would be better to say that a new will has been created) through baptism so that the insubordination of the lower powers is no longer imputable, but free from damnation. Renewed by grace, the person of the new human being is on a higher level and immune from such corruption. With a simple act of his superior will, he can disapprove of what takes place in the lower will, but cannot always prevent what happens. Nevertheless, this is sufficient for us to be able to say that fault and sin, in their strict sense, have been avoided. St. Paul expresses the matter in this way: 'I of myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.'(60) Mind here is the superior part of the will, the simple act of willing, which is however incapable of suppressing movements of animal instinct; flesh is the unbridled instinct.

94. Justification, which God brings about in us here on earth through baptism, takes place in the essence of the soul. Within the soul, now restored to its former beauty through grace, justification creates a supernatural instinct, a power to will divine things. Our co-operation with this justification in the present life is carried out in the higher part of the renewed will within us, although concupiscence continues to oppose the divine law and rebel against it. But human salvation is assured as grace enters the essence of the soul and our will reaches out to collaborate with it (as in the case of infants). St. Paul says: 'If God is for us, who is against us? . . . Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies.'(61) He goes on to indicate the stability of this justification, and the firmness of the superior will: 'For I am sure that neither death, nor life . . . will be able to separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.'(62) Nothing can conquer the person incorporated in Christ if he does not cede of his own free will.

95. Such is the order of human justification. Christ, by inserting a new, active, holy and divine principle in our spirit, has revitalized what was once subject to death while leaving the initial disorder in our flesh. This new principle is the germ of salvation for the whole human being, a germ destined to flower and, at a suitable time and in a suitable way, to bring salvation to the body also. The Apostle says once more: 'So, then, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh — for if you live according to the flesh, you shall die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live.'(63)

96. The flesh, therefore, remains infected and subject to death. But the infection will be destroyed by death itself which becomes as it were another baptism. The New Testament continually warns us to regard the flesh as something dead and to await the salvation of the whole human being in the justice that death will bring to the flesh. This mystery is grounded in fact in the suffering of Christ. 'Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life . . . So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.'(64) Again: 'If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit which dwells in you,'(65) that is, dwells in the essence of your soul.

97. But this is still not sufficient. The will not only plays a negative, but also a positive part in some sins — in the sense used by St. Paul — which are not imputed to fault in baptized persons.

Concupiscence and other passions appertaining to sins arouse spurious instincts and needs within us with great urgency and impetuosity. A human physical law then brings into play all the powers which can contribute to satisfying these needs; the human being uses his subjective unity to activate the powers that can help him quieten his instincts. Thus, even bodily needs stimulate the intellect to find a way by which the subject may satisfy these needs. The will, however, as the power which operates spontaneously with the understanding, moves more or less rapidly with the intellect according to the urgency of the stimuli and needs. In these circumstances the weak will cannot always use its power of freedom to suspend its practical judgment, which it pronounces without delay. Haste and precipitation cause a willing, effective error in which, as we have seen, the principle of all immorality consists.(66) The will can suspend the judgment only if it has a reason for doing so.

But if the reason for pronouncing judgment is pressing, the will has no time to rise above itself and find a good reason for suspending its verdict. As St. Thomas says, the reason remains almost bound in this case. In these circumstances, when suspension of judgment is impossible, the reason proceeds to judge the satisfaction of its immediate need by considering what is useful rather than what is true. It deceives itself, although its consequent immorality cannot be imputed to personal fault because it arose without the use of freedom. It is imputed rather to the fault of human nature. In other words, it would incur the damnation proper to original sin, to which it would be reduced, had not baptism removed such imputation or damnation.(67)

98. A distinction certainly has to be made between perceiving intellectually a particular act we are about to do, and having sufficient time to recollect ourselves, compare the act with the law, consider the incongruity of the act, and vividly sense its waywardness. If this can be done, and is done, the obligating force of the law, strengthened by our thoughtfulness and by a well-disposed spirit, acquires enough energy to prevail over passion and the disordered instinct. If, however, the urgency of passion and of instinctive need eliminates time, and the person under pressure has not attained the habitual dominion over his will that can only be obtained through constant practice, there will be nothing to prevent the will itself from consenting to the passion, whose satisfaction will be the sole object of willed attention.

99. Such actions, which include first movements,(68) must be considered human actions (although they arise spontaneously or rather slip out of us) because the person is carrying out what he knows. They are also moral actions because of the intervention of the will, although they are done without deliberation or hesitation as a result of the speed with which the will acts. However, despite the rapid conquests made by the bad instinct in these moments of surprise, negligence is often present in the person who acts. In such a case, at least venial sin is committed. If there is no negligence, these acts in the baptised person are merely moral defects, not sins properly speaking because there has been no co-operation in the act nor turning away from God on the part of the supreme principle. And because freedom is lacking they are not faults. But in those not baptized, similar failings have their source in the fault of original sin, which is their ultimate cause and origin, and together with the original sin of which they form part are imputed to human nature, their proximate cause.

100. These non-imputable sins, in which original sin is at work, allow us to explain why our original defect is sometimes called sins in scripture rather than sin. For example: 'And in sins did my mother conceive me.'(69) Original sin, although one in its root, produces a great many sins in the course of human life.

101. These moral imperfections are found especially in infancy, before we have learnt the free use of our own will. Although the power of will is present at our birth, the use of this power is not attained easily. We must first acquire the notions of the things about which we have to deliberate, and then the abstract notions of the things which we need, in order to choose whether to suspend or put into effect our act of will. In our infancy, therefore, we continuously obey our instincts and passions without ceasing. Sensitively, and in its animality, the baby is highly active; its intellect, however, is without sufficient information and its intellective will almost blind as a consequence. At first, freedom is totally lacking; later it is still very weak. The human being as a baby appears little different from a beast, although its understanding is very alert and intent on everything it perceives. When a baby perceives something pleasant, it wants it with its natural will; and it rejects what is unpleasant. Understanding and will are constantly at work, but the will obeys carnal motives alone. Spiritual stimuli are unknown; the baby cannot oppose with sufficient rapidity the impetus drawing it to obey sensitive nature; its practical, free energy is still undeveloped.

102. St. Augustine's acute observations on childhood should be recalled here. He indicates clearly the sins (in the sense we have been using the word) of infancy: 'Who will remind me of the sins committed when I was a child? For indeed, there is no one in the world without sin, not even a day-old child. . . How could I sin at that time? Was I too eager for my mother's breast? . . . If I were as eager now, not for milk of course but grown-up food, I would rightly be mocked and reproved. So I was acting reprehensively. But because, at that age, I was incapable of understanding reproof, neither custom nor reason allowed me to be reproved' (personal imputability is excluded). 'But we gradually reject this waywardness — which proves that it is waywardness because I have never met anyone yet who rejects what he has come to recognise as good.' He goes on to describe other actions that he considers sins of his infancy: 'Can I say that I was doing good when I cried for what I could not have without harm to myself? Or when I was bitterly angry with servants and adult freemen alike? Or when I twisted and turned as babies do, trying as much as possible to hurt even my parents, and those wiser than myself, when they did not do what I wanted, even though they could not have done it without harming me?'

And he concludes: 'The baby's bodily weakness is innocent, but not the weakness of his soul,'(70) a distinction that strengthens what we hinted earlier when we said that sin does not reside in the animal part alone, but in the spirit, that is, in the will, which allows itself to be guided by the animal element even against all reason until we have attained either dominion over self or at least the free use of our will. St. Augustine would never have considered animal movements in themselves as sins without any relationship to an intelligent spirit. He did see, however, that in human beings such movements become the matter of sin because they receive from the will the form of sin either in so far as they lack due subjection to the will — which would be present in an integral human nature — or in so far as the will positively consents to these movements, as in the case of children and of rapid movements, which in certain habits draw us inevitably to sin.

St. Augustine reaffirms his teaching with an observation on a child sucking the breast: 'I saw and sensed the jealousy of that baby. It could not talk, but it was pale with envy at the other baby sucking at the same time.' And he is not afraid to add: 'We accept these things tolerantly, but only because they will pass as the child grows — not because they count for nothing or very little.' Finally he exclaims: 'Lord, it pains me to have to write about this part of my life, the life I lead in this world . . . But if I was conceived in iniquity, and in sins nourished by my mother in the womb, tell me, O my God, I beg you, tell me, Lord, where and when was I ever innocent?'(71)

103. Nevertheless, St. Augustine himself acknowledges that in such acts, although moral, and although called sins by him, there cannot be personal fault because they are not done freely. The great bishop of Hippo takes as an unshakeable principle that sin, 'when it cannot in any way be avoided,' is never committed with personal fault: 'Who sins when his act can in no way be avoided?'(72) St. Thomas affirms the same truth when he makes culpable sin consist essentially in an act of free will: 'Sin consists essentially in an act of free will.'(73)

Notes

(41) PE, 193, 194.

(42) We must note carefully that this necessity does not contradict the nature of will. If this were the case, the will would be under constraint despite itself - a genuine absurdity, because a will under restraint is not a will. In this sense the will is essentially free. But there is also a necessity dependent upon the will's being determined either because it has reached its term, as in heaven or hell, or because its own internal laws leave it without alternatives - when, for instance, only one good stands before it. In this case, it spontaneously follows that good because it has nothing with which to compare it. In a word, the will is obliged to operate according to its nature. But here what appears as a kind of necessity is simply the spontaneity of the will itself.

(43) St. Thomas is speaking of free will, as the context shows.

(44) S.T., I-II, q. 21, art. 2.

(45) S.T., I-II, q. 77, art. 8.

(46) The will is simply the faculty which operates by following knowledge. This constitutive element does not require the will to be free, that is to say, it does not require the will to be able to operate or not, or to operate immediately in a contrary sense. Nevertheless, the human being never lacks potential or conditional freedom, that is, the will can operate freely, given certain conditions.

(47) S.T., I-II, q. 81, art. 1, ad 5.

(48) S.T., I-II, q. 81, art. 1, in corp.

(49) S.T., Suppl., q. 98, art. 6, ad 3, see also in corp.

(50) Some theologians employ the word voluntary ambiguously. At times they use it in the broad sense of willed, at other times, in the sense of willed freely, as in this case. This has provoked innumerable disputes. We should be prepared now to abandon all ambiguous expressions for the sake of precise, clear language.

(51) Confessions, bk. 8, chap. 5. Sometimes will and concupiscence wage war on one another. This seems perhaps to contradict what has already been said about the will's not suffering violence (cf. 76). But even after a long struggle, the will, if it sins, does so spontaneously, not as a result of violence. Careful consideration of the will in its different periods of struggle, of sin and of post-sin helps to clarify the matter. After sin, when temptation has ceased and mental tranquillity has returned, the will is truly sorry for the evil it has committed; but in the second period, when the will gives in, it is the will itself which spontaneously consents to sin. Before sin, a mixture of good and bad motives can present themselves to the will. They do not force the will, but persuade or seduce it. The will is not moved except by a force which conspires with and conquers the will through a kind of association and befriending, and does so more easily by entering the will and uniting with it interiorly. God's activity is such a force: it creates the will, working in and with it. But these forces which insinuate themselves in the will can oppose one another in the same way as motives which draw the will in different directions. Hence the struggle we so often experience. The combat, however, is not between the will and something other than the will. The struggle takes place between two principles in the will where two motives try to attract its attention. The will then increases the force of attraction of one or the other through its own intrinsic energy (freedom).

(52) Aquinas posits the essence of original sin in aversion from God. But this must not be understood as though original sin were a simple negation. A pure negation of grace would be that in a person created by God in natural conditions. In this state the creature would not be positively averse from God, but simply not turned to God and, as Bellarmine says, deprived of supernatural union with him. We must note that the first human being, created with supernatural grace, turned away from God with a positive act of will. This evil act must necessarily have left in the human will an attitude averse from good and from God, and inclined to evil.

(53) Cf. AMS, bk 4, where we have discussed personality and shown that it has its base in the supreme principle of the human being.

(54) S.T., I-II, q. 82, art. 3, ad 2 [q. 81, art. 4, ad 2].

(55) Rom 7: 20.

(56) The word will is often used of animal instinct, and in this sense generates confusion in philosophical and theological studies. The same confusion arises when the word knowledge is applied to pure sensations. Although certain respectable authors follow this metaphorical usage and apply to human sensitivity words properly used for human intellection, I think our modern age calls for greater exactness in language. Those wishing to examine more closely the difference between animal instinct and will which assents to or dissents from this instinct, will find more detailed discussion in Certainty, 1285-1300, and in AMS.

(57) 'Nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man' (Jn 1: 13).

(58) Rom 7: 17, 18.

(59) Rom 7: 15.

(60) Rom 7: 25.

(61) Rom 8: 31, 33.

(62) Rom 8: 38, 39.

(63) Rom 8: 12, 13. In scripture the words flesh and concupiscence have a very broad meaning. The disorder they indicate is present not only in the desire from which concupiscence springs, but also in all the lower powers of the soul. Such disorder forms the matter of original sin. St. Paul sometimes speaks of this disorder in the plural, for example when he says: 'When we were in the flesh, THE PASSIONS OF SIN, which were by the law, did work in our members, to bring forth fruit unto death' (Rom 7: 5). St. Thomas explains why concupiscence is used in preference to other words to indicate every disorder in our lower parts: 'All the passions of anger are reduced to passions of concupiscence because the latter are the principal passions, amongst which concupiscence has freer rein and is felt more acutely . . . consequently, all passions are attributed to concupiscence as the principal passion in which all others are somehow included' (S.T., I-II, q. 82, art. 3, ad 2).

(64) Rom 6: 3, 4, 11.

(65) Rom 8: 11.

(66) Haste in judging as one of the causes of error was examined in Certainty, 1331-1334. Moral error, as the principle of all immorality, was examined in PE, 114-181.

(67) St. Thomas uses these terms in stating the principle: 'The notion of fault cannot exist without the inclusion of the notion of something willed. But as there is a certain good relative to nature. and a certain good relative to person, so we have to distinguish between what we may call FAULT IN NATURE and FAULT IN A PERSON. For fault in a person, the WILL OF THE PERSON has to be present, as we can see clearly in an actual fault committed by a person. But only the will in a given nature is necessary for a fault of nature.'

(68) Although the will sometimes concurs positively in first movements, it does not act with advertence to the law, or at least not with clear advertence. The person knows the movement and wants it, but does not reflect clearly that it is opposed to the law. However, the will takes part in the physical, rather than the moral entity of the act. To this extent it can be said that often the will's defect is negative. Although it concurs in the act, it does not do so fully because what it wants is simply the act, not the act clothed, as it were, in its relationship with the law.

(69) Ps 50: 7 [51: 7]. To say that original sin is a true fault in the strict sense, without considering it in relationship with the free will of Adam, is to fall into Baianism. Baius spoke of original sin as imputable, that is, a fault, and the following proposition was rightly condemned: 'Original sin is truly sin without any relationship or regard to the will of him from whom it originated' (Prop. 47).

(70) Confessions, 1, 7.

(71) Confessions, 1, 7.

(72) De lib. arbitrio, bk. 3, chap 18, n. 40.

(73) S.T., I-II, art. 6, ad 7.